Netflix’s upcoming take on a Philip K. Dick sci-fi book will serve as the perfect follow-up to Stephen King‘s underrated 2025 adaptation.
In terms of both critical and commercial success, 2025 has been one hell of a year for Stephen King adaptations. While his movie adaptations struggled to leave their mark at the box office, almost all of them were lauded by viewers and critics. Interestingly, his TV adaptations, which have largely been failures in the past, have performed really well in 2025.
It: Welcome to Derry shattered records when it first landed on HBO and even managed to earn positive reviews from critics. Another relatively obscure Stephen King TV show landed on MGM+ earlier this year. It is hard not to see how Netflix’s new Philip K. Dick adaptation would be its perfect follow-up.
Netflix’s Philip K Dick Adaptation Will Be The Perfect Follow Up To Stephen King’s The Institute
MGM+’s The Institute is primarily about a bunch of telepathic and telekinetic children who are abducted and exploited to carry out immoral operations for an organization. However, it later also introduces precogs, who help the titular facility’s adults foresee the future and prevent world-ending events from happening.
This makes one question whether the free will of young children should be taken away in the present to save humanity from its predetermined future.
Philip K. Dick’s The World Jones Made, which Netflix is adapting, dives deeper into this conflict between determinism and agency with a more fantastical story. The original sci-fi book also introduces a character who possesses precognition. It initially comes off as an ability that can protect the world, but it soon turns into a tool of mass manipulation that reshapes everything from politics to individual choice.
Netflix’s take on The World Jones Made, titled The Future Is Ours, will be introducing some major changes to the source material. However, the fact that it will use precognition as a narrative device to explore complex arguments around the nature of free will in a deterministic world would make it the perfect follow-up to The Institute.
The Institute Season 2 Can Borrow Ideas From Philip K. Dick’s The World Jones Made
The Institute season 1’s ending aligns with that of the original Stephen King book. Despite this, The Institute has been renewed for another season. Since the show’s first season exhausts its source material, season 2 will adopt an original story. This gives The Institute the perfect opportunity to learn from The World Jones Made before it expands its vision in the upcoming season.
Although The Institute season 1 has its gripping moments, it struggled to earn wide acclaim because many of its ideas and story beats have been explored multiple times in sci-fi and horror.
If it leans more towards the precognition story like the Philip K. Dick book and uses it to explore complex ideas surrounding human autonomy and perception of time, it could elevate itself above most shows of the genre and other Stephen King adaptations.
